faderift | OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

WHO: Everybody present for the effort to draw out the Nightmare.
WHAT: Oh no.
WHEN: 28-30 Bloomingtide
WHERE: THE FADE as it exists, approximately, in an incomprehensible nongeographical way, alongside the Western Approach.
NOTES: You can only participate in this plot if you signed up in advance. (Not really, this is a joke.) For driveby GM taunting or to have the debris of personal nightmares appear in the Fade sign up here. Check here for notes on crystal functionality, which will not be normal. (GIF source.)

The plan is simple enough, on paper.

Lord Livius Erimond, locked in Skyhold's dungeon since his capture, finally cracks when he learns that the Grey Wardens have moved on and no one is coming to negotiate for his release. There's no mind-control driving the sacrifices, he says, only fear. Corypheus has an arrangement with a demon to amplify it and extend the reach of the song that's driving the Wardens to desperation. Handle it, and maybe they'll see that they're being manipulated.

In practice, it's a little fuzzier. Some guesswork. Some optimism. Approximating the demon's location takes time and effort from the Fade-fluent. There's a rift nearby, but it's small, nondescript. Making it bigger, drawing attention and drawing the demon out onto solid ground where it can be fought, calls for every anchor shard on hand, mages and Templars to assist, archers and swordsmen at the ready. The Herald did it before, at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It's feasible. Just wiggle your fingers, and--

--and the sky opens up wide, then wider, too wide, green light flooding out like water finally cresting over a bank, and the ground beneath your feet turns from sand to stone. In some places it becomes vertical. In others it stops existing at all. The rift sprawls and spiders out with almost sentient aim, encompassing everyone it can reach. It takes two seconds, maybe three.

Then it closes.

I. THE NIGHTMARE

The good news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly. The bad news is: the Inquisition pinpointed the Nightmare's location correctly.

So if you find a second to to wonder where you are, there are two possible answers. The first is the raw Fade, where few have trod since the ancient magisters entered the Golden City and began the Blight. The City is Black now and it hangs in the distance, always on the horizon, always visible, but never within reach. The light is sickly green and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, creating shadows from any and all directions. What direction is up and what direction is sideways is open for debate anyway. The ground--if it can be called that when it is only sometimes below you--is dark and rough, all crags and cliffs and spires. It's wet, too, with puddles and stagnant streams wound through the rock.

The second possible answer to the question of where, and the one that might warrant even more attention than the first, is right on top of a damn demon.

The Nightmare is massive, as large as a small fort. It has a dozen legs and at least twice as many eyes; a warm, civilly sinister voice that knows your deepest and darkest fears; and a seemingly endless supply of minions. Terror demons spring out of the ground around you with creaking screams. Fearlings take the shape of your simpler phobias: here a spider, there a snake, or roaring flames, a lyrium-encrusted Templar. Fighting through the flood of demons and bringing down the Nightmare will take every sword, every staff, and several hours. Pick a leg.

And when it's over--when the Nightmare is dead and only straggling Fearlings and occasional Terrors present an immediate threat--try to figure out what's next.

II. SEARCHING

Attempts to tear a new hole in the Veil from the inside will produce no results. But those sensitive to the Fade may be able to feel something--not quite like a draft guiding you out of a cave, but there's no closer analogy in the common tongue. A faint whiff of reality, somewhere in the distance, straight away from the distant Black City. There's no sunrise or sunset, and an hour can feel like a day or feel like a minute, but time is passing, and the walk is long by any measure.

While it's in your best interest to stay with the rest of the Inquisition's forces, this region of the Fade is a twisty, treacherous thing that seems to actively conspire to separate and mislead its visitors. More Fearlings slither out of crevices to menace anyone who lingers alone or tries to sleep. There's a marshy expanse that does its best to trap feet, and a field of memorial stones with the names of visitors etched into their surfaces, each with a cause of death marked below. Everywhere you step the ground is littered with evidence of terrible dreams, worked into the landscape like they were there first and it has grown up around them. There are skeletons in the stone, rock formations that twist into the shape of gallows, lost toys underfoot, an entire home tucked down a winding path, achingly empty.

III. ESCAPE

The Nightmare is dead, but its absence creates new reasons to fear. It begins slowly, things crumbling: the edge of a stair giving way unexpectedly, a towering hunk of rock a ways off collapsing upward into the open air and reforming there. The path rearranges as it's walked and takes wanderers in different directions, leaving them to fight their ways back to the main group. It was the concentration of fear and willpower embodied in the Nightmare that held this domain of the Fade intact, and without it, there's a power vacuum to fill. The spirits drawn here are drawn by lingering fear, and warped by it.

The forms they take may not be those you're familiar with from outside the Fade--less deformed, more malleable, more insidious, the things you most or least want to see. Those who long for safety may find a gentle Desire demon willing to offer it. Those whose fears stem from insecurities may hear the whispers of lurking Envy, mimicking their voices from its hiding place, cautiously testing for a foothold. If fear only pisses you off, be prepared to face your Rage. And if you refuse to be afraid--if you have this under control, if you know you'll be all right--a smiling embodiment of Pride may appear to praise your prowess and ask you to put those skills to other uses.

Whatever form your demons take, they are distractions from the larger issue: this part of the Fade is collapsing, unstable, and not meant for creatures like you to survive in. As important as it is to face your fears, it may in the end be more important to run from them. Regroup, keep moving, take head counts. There's a rift ahead, small enough to slip through one at a time, out into the desert, with its bright sun and relatively solid ground--and however long it feels like you've been walking, days or weeks, Adamant Fortress is visible across the sand.

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I

This is probably the most afraid he has ever been in his life, and Kas is honestly quite impressed that he hasn't soiled himself yet. This was not in his training, thank you very much! Nothing had the right to be that big or have that many eyes. Ever.

He is kind of proud when he hits one of those leg-eyes with a shot, however. Every little bit helped, right? He should probably be concentrating on the smaller things, but... well. Qunari and their love for big targets... plus he was a ranged fighter.

"Yeah! Take that!" He cheers, trying to pump himself up a bit. Unfortunately the teen's outburst only draws a few little fearlings towards him, shaping into rabid dogs with foaming mouths - and Kas is very quickly not cheering any more.

"Fuck."

II

He tried really hard to stay with everyone else, but fuck this place, fuck the Fade in general and especially fuck this ugly little graveyard with his fucking name on it.

"'Worthless'," he reads out loud with a hollow voice, and his blue eyes wanders from the stone to the bullwhip next to it. He still remembers the sting of it, the scars it left on his back.

Worthless. Street rat, thief, runaway, orphan. Qunari.

He was nothing.

Yeah, that was about enough of his bravado, thank you. He's just gonna sink down on the dirt here and cry.

III

She comes to him, sweet-voiced and promising. Sounding like her, smelling like her. Holding him like she did... but just like his memory her features are blurred, unfocused.

It hurts almost as much as knowing that it couldn't be his mom. His mom was dead. Kas knew that far too well.

Still. It felt so good. So safe.

Maybe he could stay just a little while?

Edited 2016-05-28 23:00 (UTC)

"Kas, step away from her. Now." Korrin will be all sympathy after this is dealt with but for now, her tone is firm, commanding. She narrows her eyes at Kas' 'mom', spirit blade ready. "You're not getting him, demon. You'll have to come through me first, and good fucking luck."

"So protective! Can't you see he needs me?" The shadow says with a slight purr, stroking over Kas' hair. Its lips curve in a smile, even if the face remains a strange void. "Such a confused and lost little child..."

"...I'm not a child," Kas says softly. "I know it's not actually my mom, Korrin. I just..." He sighs and rubs his face, trying to pull away. "I can't remember her face, Korrin. I just can't."

"A demon is the last fucking thing he needs." Korrin stiffens, eyes narrowing at the hair stroking, but at least Kas is pulling away. Good. "...I can see that, Kas. But remember; demons always lie. It will never give you what you want." That's the first, most essential rule of dealing with the Fade, mage or not.

The creature tightens her hold around the boy, and Kas tries to pull away again. "Let... go!"

"Hush now, my little boy... I can give you everything you want. Your mother's face. Her forgiveness... you don't have to be a lost little child any more." The voice is soothing, promising. Like soft balm on his every insecurity.

...but Korrin is right. Kas tries to kick himself free, arms too bent for him to reach his daggers. "Fuck you! Just... Korrin, help!"

At that, Korrin says not another word, immediately charging forward. The blade winks out of existence momentarily, as she doesn't want to accidentally harm Kas, but she still keeps it in hand. As soon as she shoves Kas away, that spirit blade gets activated and that demonic bitch will suddenly have a sword in her gut. No one's going to get to him on her watch.

Desire demons are cowardly things that do not like fighting, so when Korrin rushes forward it tosses Kas to get away - only to be stabbed in the gut by the spirit blade. Shrieking, they seem to melt down into the ground and disappear.

Kas gets up on his feet slowly, staring at the place where she had been with a tired look in his eyes didn't didn't fit someone his age. "...sorry, Korrin."

That shriek is satisfying, and Korrin straightens, her mind clearing now that there isn't a direct threat to Kas in her line of sight. Shaking her head, she walks over to Kas and gives him a hug, a looser one than the suffocating hug from that desire demon, but one all the same. "You've nothing to be sorry for, Kas. That's what demons do, fuck with people. They're very good at it, especially in this place. All the more reason to escape, right?"

He holds on to her for longer than he usually ever did, trying to hide his face for a moment and get himself under control. There's still a bit of a sniffle there, but he forces himself to stop and stand back.

"I knew it was a demon, Korrin... I know my mom's dead. I just... I can't remember her face any more, and it's bothering me."

While Kas is close, he gets a gentle hair-ruffling, just because she can. Listening, she sighs and nods. "That would bother me, too, Kas. But it's not your fault, you know. You were young, it happens. Whatever the case, I'd be she'd be proud of you now."

Korrin knows she is, bragging about him whenever he comes up in her conversations. He may not be related by blood, but that won't stop her from seeing him as family.

Kas shakes his head at that, looking back at the spot where the demon had disappeared. "I was twelve, Korrin. Not four." He sighs a little bit, shaking his head. "...but whatever. It's over."

Next time he had to fight. He had to pull his daggers and thrust them in that creature. Not just... want. It was just foolish.

"Can we get out of here? I might draw more." He glances at her staff. "...is there a trick to not attract them?"

The age issue does make her wonder, but not that much; trauma has a way of messing with memories. She lets it go for now, though, not wanting to pick at a fresh wound. Nodding to his request, she steers them away from where the demon manifested. "In Nightmare's realm, I doubt it. But there is such a thing as safety in numbers, you know. If nothing else, at least we can take turns snapping each other out of it. I might need that, too; sure, I trained, but physically being here is...different. It's nothing like dreaming your way over."

He follows along, keeping close and eyeing the endless fade landscape with a weary look. Kas leans a bit closer as a spirit is seen in the distance, but it ignores them completely.

"...this is a really messed-up place, Korrin. Do you see this every night?"

"This? Oh, hell no. This is what we get for crossing over physically; dreaming your way over is a whole other can of worms. When we dream, it can resemble anything from our minds or memories. Spirit still show up, but when it's on 'my' turf, it's easier to deal with." And now she's so far out of her element that the trip back through the rift can't come soon enough.

That seems to ease his worries a little bit, and he wonders just how many spirits walked around in mage dreams. Did they walk around in non-mage dreams as well, but couldn't see the dreamer?

It was all really weird.

"I prefer nightmares over this. At least you can wake from those."

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gatheringstorm - 2016-06-15 16:18 (UTC) - Expand

Bull's face isn't likely the one the kid wants to see. But he's trying to keep them all together, lest someone wander off and be lost forever to the fucking weirdness of this place.

His eye dart once over the gravestones before regretting it immensely, growling low in the back of his throat and lowering his gaze. "Kid. Up and at them. Unless you've got your heart set on staying here."

The teen stiffens, trying to not cringe at Bull's low growl or his voice. It's very much not a face he wants to see, and he's kind of worried it is some kind of demon come to taunt him.

"What do you care?" Kas snaps, angrily wiping his eyes. Wouldn't someone like him be happy to lose the bunch of Qun traitors in this mess?

It figured that he'd get a response along those lines. The kid was Vashoth, after all, raised on tales of what the Ben-Hassrath were like, what they would do to a person who stepped outside bounds. A lot of those stories were true.

But he snorts, nostrils flaring, before taking a step closer. "Look around. You think any of this is shit we want to be dealing with right now? Fade crap is messing with your head. You gonna let it?"

That snort, one closer step, and Kas is on the defense at once with his hands near his daggers and his stance shifted to fight. Just like Zevran taught him. The mix of fear and anger in his eyes is a little to raw for someone that only heard stories.

At least in Kas' mind, he had lived it.

It takes yet another few seconds for him to actually register what the Ben-Hassrath was saying. It confuses the teen, and he gives Bull a suspicious look.

"...no," he finally says. "I'm not going to let anything mess with my head."

"But that's all he does, kid. It's what the Ben-Hassrath do. They lie and pretend to be whatever they need to be to catch deserters. To kill them." The voice is soft, soothing, coiling from somewhere deep in the Fade mist. "But why he would bother with something so small and insignificant as you-"

It trails off in crackling laughter, the voice changing, deepening, becoming an echo of Bull's drawl as his shape takes form and steps out from the mist. Cheerful. Casual. Painted with Vitaar. "Don't even have your full horns yet. What trouble could you possibly be for the Qun? Maybe we've gone crazy already, trying to get you off your guard so we can kill you. Maybe we have a demon riding around in our skin saying how much fun it'd be to carve you up. Or Maybe this is all the Qun wants. To find even the littlest, weakest children and cull them because they are Tal Va-Fucking-Shoth."

Edited 2016-06-02 09:15 (UTC)

Oh, and Bull's hackles go right up in an instant, a chill running down his spine as that demon comes strolling out of the Fade mist. The fear is an old one, rooted in childhood from the first time he'd heard about the things spirits could do if you let them, and the panic at knowing that all your physical strength meant nothing if they got inside your head.

But he pushes down whatever fear flickers in his breast at the sight in favor of anger, white-hot and blistering.

"Got a lot of fucking nerve, demon." Bul growls, shifting his stance to step in front of the kid if he needs to. Vashoth or no, he's with the Inquisition. And he's not letting some demon get their claws into him, especially not when it's wearing his face. Has this demon encountered anyone else?

Dorian.

Without so much as blinking, his hand goes for his axe, ignoring the searing pain in his side as he does so. That wound's going to be problematic, but now's not the time to fuss with it. Kid needs help, that much is clear.

If the teen wasn't scared before, he certainly is now. Kas' face goes a pale, pale grey and cold sweat runs down his neck. His wide eyes stare at the new Bull - demon, he tells himself - and the words are like knives in his gut. There's a pained sound from the young qunari, and for a moment he's shaking too much to even grab his daggers.

Small and insignificant. Don't even have your full horns. Cull them because they are Tal Va-Fucking-Shoth.

The pained noise grows into a scream, raw and broken... and then Kas is moving, finally drawing his daggers. Fight or flight kicked in, and apparently fight won by just a hair.

He's still screaming when he attacks the Demon Bull, stabbing wildly and with no finesse. Kas was a cornered animal, and he's fighting to survive.

"Well we've got some huge balls, don't we?" Another one of those booming laughs, like this is all such a fun joke. Him, the kid, everything. There's a wrongness to his shoulders, something settled and not, like the shape's hard to hold. "Maybe I should hunting for that Vint when I'm done with you? See what he thinks."

It's all the time he has before the kid's screaming, launching himself forward, and those massive hands warp and twist into something like claws as they slam down, one of the knives cleaving into it's palm and hearing yet another laugh. "That tickles."

"...Crap."

He wasn't expecting the kid to just bolt past him, though in hindsight, it had been pretty stupid of him to put a Vashoth with knives at his back in the first place. Particularly one capable of snapping like that.

Just goes to prove, he thinks, before the thing starts talking again. And really, once is enough. Even with the infected wound at his side throbbing painfully, he's still not backing down from a fight, much less one of these things against...

One of his? Technically not. But there's few he'd leave a demon's dubious mercies.

The axe falls into his hands once more as he edges around to the demon's side. Probably not actually blind on that side like he is, but better than coming in behind Kas and risk hitting them both. With a grunt, he charges in, swinging for the creature's back.

Kas isn't even sure what was happening any more. He tried to strike, but the creature... changed. Then his forearms were bleeding and he almost dropped his daggers, eyes widening in horror. Demon!Bull just laughed at him, like he was a useless maggot wiggling around.

He was going to die. He was going to die!

...and then everything was suddenly so calm again. The pain could be easily ignored as Issala tightens his grip around the daggers and thrusts his body to the side, using momentum to try and force the demon's body directly in the Bull's way so that axe could tear through everything without hitting the rogue's own body.

If the Hissrad wanted to be a hero, let him.

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OPEN: The Nightmare's Domain

Kas | OTA

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